The present invention relates generally to baby monitors and more particularly to a baby monitoring system that includes a parent unit and a baby unit that have a one-way or two-way radio frequency communications link established therebetween. Baby monitor systems of this type, such as the Fisher-Price® Sweet Dreams Monitor™ manufactured and/or sold by Mattel, Inc. of El Segundo, Calif., are well known in the art.
Some baby monitors include certain limited recording functionality. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,043,747 to Altenhofen discloses a baby monitor system that includes a message storage mechanism. More specifically, the parent unit, which is carried by the parent, includes a microphone that allows a care giver to record and store in a digital message memory at the parent unit a soothing message for playback to the baby via the baby unit, which remains in the baby's room. In response to activation of a play switch on the parent unit, the message is reproduced by a speaker on the baby unit. The entire disclosure of U.S. Pat. No. 6,043,747 is hereby incorporated herein by reference.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,766,145 discloses a child monitor system that is similar to conventional nursery room baby monitors in that includes a local unit (carried by the parent) and a remote unit (located in the child's room) that are capable of wirelessly communicating with each other. Each unit has the capability of receiving and outputting acoustic audio signals as well as the capability of transmitting and receiving the signals to and from the units. In one embodiment, the local unit includes a memory in which input signals from either unit may be stored prior to being output. For example, the memory may be implemented by a common digital recording integrated circuit such as a commercially available Winbond Electronics Corp. voice recorder with SRAM. This allows a user to save and later playback sounds made by infant near the remote unit. Accordingly, the system receives, at the remote (baby) unit, sounds made by an infant and transmits the sounds to the local (parent) unit. The system then stores the sounds in the memory of the local (parent) unit. In order to output these recorded sounds, the system retrieves the infant sounds from the memory and outputs the sounds at a speaker of the local unit. In operation, the end-user pushes a record button to record and the system records sounds over sounds previously recorded and stored in memory. The entire disclosure of U.S. Pat. No. 6,766,145 is hereby incorporated herein by reference.